


Shovel’s Clatter

by Tachi_Sakon



Series: “Osamu is in love with Ghost Suna AU” [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Autopsies, Doctor Ushijima Wakatoshi, Established Relationship, Ghost Suna Rintarou, Grave Digger Oikawa Toru, Grave Digger Sakusa Kiyomi, Grave Robbers, Grave digging, Hearing Voices, Historical Inaccuracy, Historical References, Implied Sexual Content, Injury Recovery, Landlord Oikawa Toru, M/M, Minor Injuries, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Partly Deaf Iwaizumi Hajime, Permanent Injury, Physical Disability, Takes place before the AU, iwaoi - Freeform, oiiwa - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tachi_Sakon/pseuds/Tachi_Sakon
Summary: Hajime leaned just a bit closer, eyes blazing and face set; muscles pulled and teeth bared before whispering,“You may have fooled yourself, but you’ll never fool me.”()Oikawa watched with a heavy heart as his shovel fell to the ground nod with a loud clatter, never to be picked up again.()
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, Akaashi Keiji/Konoha Akinori, Aone Takanobu/Futakuchi Kenji, Azumane Asahi/Nishinoya Yuu, Bokuto Koutarou/Konoha Akinori, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kinoshita Hisashi/Narita Kazuhito, Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka, Tendou Satori/Ushijima Wakatoshi, Tsukishima Akiteru/Udai Tenma, Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Series: “Osamu is in love with Ghost Suna AU” [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020646
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Shovel’s Clatter

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place before and during the AU and sort of (?) based of a Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Every morning, coming home from past nights was the same.

* * *

_  
  
Hey, why do you have rust on your boots, Oikawa?_

**Rust from climbing the high fences.**

_What's with all these scrapes and scars? Did you fight a coyote or something?_

**Climbing the brick walls and jumping through old brambles and the overgrown**.

_Damn this bag is heavy! What the hell do you have in here? Bodies?!_

**Yes**.

_What reeks in here? Did a skunk get into our rations again?_

**That would be the contents in my bag that I'll be taking to the hospitals tomorrow night.**

_Woah, what awful callouses. C'mere, I'll wrap them for you._

**No thanks,**

_Why is your coat all in tatters?_

**Standing waist high in graves and hefting bodies out of coffins, you tell me.**

_What's with the sullen face?_

_Why do you always come home as if you've seen death?_

**Man, his poor tenants really had no idea how close to the truth they really got sometimes. It made Oikawa want to stab himself three times in the eye because— the _irony_.**

_You look like those dead bodies that get taken to the yards in those rickety carts on the daily, Toru_.

_What do you do at work that makes you come home as if you're doing the reaper's work?_

_What do you do out there that your boots get so muddy? Dig?_

**Dig. That's what he did.**

_Straighten up. Don't sit like you're shoveling weights_.

**Shoveling he did. It just wasn't weights that he was shoveling**.

* * *

  
  
“Did you hear that another body went missing from the Old Japan Cemetery yesterday?“

"Really?" 

"Yeah," his tenant hummed as he held up Oikawa's black overcoat for inspection, "apparently the body was just buried there too."

"Do they know who it was?"

"Who, the body or the thief?"

Oikawa shrugged and propped his legs up on the small foot rest, curling his toes and crossing ankle over ankle. "Either."

The tenant shook his head with a sigh and placed the overcoat down, draping it over a chair before making his way over to Oikawa and settling down on a stool across from him, crossing one leg over the other and placing fisted hands into his lap. "Well the body was identified as the guy who was killed in a car crash two days ago. I think his name is Suna, or something."

Oikawa nodded. "I see."

The other man quirked an eyebrow at the landlord. "You don't look very surprised." He said. "It's almost like you know something about this, hm?" 

_More than you know._

The gravedigger's heart sped up rapidly, but he was sure that his tenant did not hear, for he had a weak sense of hearing; was nearly deaf because of a pistol misfire. He had nothing to worry about as long as he didn't show it.

"What, stake in your tongue, Oikawa?" His amused tenant's voice hummed.

"Nonsense." Oikawa quirked an eyebrow at the tenant in return and slapped a hand over his chest, leaning back in his armchair dramatically. "Hajime!" He gasped in mock hurt, earning an eye roll and a sigh from the other."How could you even begin to suspect me of such unholy deeds! My hands are as washed free of sin as the lord's!"

"What fancy language for such a stupid bastard who sins more than he prays." Hajime retorted, small smirk playing across his face.

"Rude, Hajime, _rude_!"

"Someone has to put you in your place," Hajime sighed with a shrug, "and dealing with you isn't the most pleasant thing in the world either."

"Hey! Remember that _you_ pay _me_ rent, and that _I_ can kick _you_ out at anytime being _your_ landlord!"

"Both you and I know perfectly well that you don't have the heart to kick me out."

Most people would call such a statement stuck up and ignorant. Those who didn't know him well enough or his relationship with the landlord.

_Oikawa knew better._

"That's true," the landlord nodded, agreeing.

Hajime chuckled before turning his attention back to the large jacket draped over the stool in tatters. "So," he said gathering the fabric in his arms and glancing back at Oikawa, "are you going to tell me where you've been?"

Oikawa shook his head, smile never quite fading from his face, like the ghost of the body he'd been digging up that night. "Not today, Hajime."

"I thought you'd say that."

"Well,” Oikawa replied with a nonchalant shrug and the tilt of his head; soft smirk fully displayed on thin, frost bit lips, “the answer's never changed."

“Just shut up and get your grimy feet off of my armchair,” Hajime frowned before bending slightly and reaching out beside him. “And here—” he threw Oikawa a pair of thin scissors, who caught them in surprise.

  
  
“What are these for, Hajime?” Oikawa asked, staring at the scissors clutched in his hands.   
  


  
“Just thought that you might wanna cut that tag off your shirt before you get caught.”   
  


  
_Get caught? Tag?_  
  


  
Oikawa blinked. “What tag?”

Hajime turned around again and pointed a finger at Oikawa’s chest. “The little gold button that says Gravedigger four-twenty-three.”   
  
  


Oikawa could feel his heat slow to a stop like the bodies he lodged past the old iron gates two nights before.

_Gravedigger 423— former doctor who had been dismissed for performing illegal autopsies on deceased patients._

_AKA, Oikawa Toru._

Finding his voice, the landlord forced a shaky chuckle, “I don’t have such a button, Hajime.”

  
  
_It’s too early— much too early._

The landlord clapped a hand over his chest, the gold button digging into his palm.

_You weren’t supposed to see that._

“I don’t have any button like that, you silly tenant.”

Hajime raised both eyebrows. “Oh yeah?” He retorted. “I know that I’m half deaf, but I never said that I was blind.”

“I told you, I have no such button.” Oikawa repeated, like the brown and broken, tattered and old record player in his bedroom on the windowsill.

Hajime froze. 

“Hajime?” The landlord asked as he watched his tenant’s tense back and pitched figure stand a few ways before him with wide eyes. 

“Alright,” Hajime whispered, voice uncharacteristically soft as he relaxed his back and let his shoulders slack. “Alright, I see how it is.”

“How what is?”

Oikawa watched as the tenant threw his coat down on the floor and began to walk back towards him, flats thumping on the marble floor; Oikawa recoiling as Hajime kicked his boots away with his toes. Backing up in his chair until he was pressed flush against the velvet cushioning, the landlord swallowed thickly.

“You may think that you’re the most _cunning_ —” the tenant hissed, hand immediately slamming into the cushions right beside Oikawa’s cheek, trapping him. “— the _smartest_ guy around,” Hajime glowered down at Oikawa, now leaning completely over him, knee wedged in between his thighs as his other arm came up beside Oikawa’s other cheek. “But reality isn’t like that.”

_“Reality isn’t like that.”_

_Oikawa knew that. He didn’t need a half dead tenant, his best fires and possibly his forbidden love interest, to tell him that._

Hajime leaned closer and closer until his nose was just barely touching Oikawa’s, their parted lips mere centimeters apart that Oikawa simply needed to shift in his seat to completely be presses against the tenant, dark brown glaring into light brown.

“Now, listen to me.” Hajime demanded.

_How ironic—_

Oikawa nodded, “I’m listening.”

“Listening and hearing are two different things, asshole.”

“Yeah, and the first half of listening you can’t do.”

Hajime grit his teeth and balled his fist beside Oikawa’s left cheek, scooting his knee nestled between Oikawa’s thighs. “I’d shut up if I were you,” he hissed.

_That’s Iwa-Chan for you,_

“Okay, okay _fine_! Just don’t move your knee anymore!” Oikawa wailed.

The two were met with a thick silence, tense and fearful as Oikawa stared leveled with Hajime.

Taking a deep breath and relaxing his shoulders, the tenant leaned just an inch closer. Eyes blazing and face tense, muscles pulled and teeth bared, Hajime whispered to him, words clear as day. “You may have fooled yourself and possibly everyone else,” Hajime breathed, “but you’ll _never_ fool me.”


End file.
